Focus peaking v. magnification

joeletx wrote:

I don't know if this has been mentioned but focus peaking needs an edge to glow on. It is useful for scenery or portrait where the focus can latch on feature such as eye lids, teeth, lip, etc... But if you want to focus to the tip of the nose or area on the cheek, it may not show/glow unless the area has some defect such as acne or facial hair. Another example where peaking does not work is taking picture of a painting; nothing will glow accept the hard edges on the picture frame.

Thanks for that information.  I wondered why sometimes I didn't seem to get any focus peaking "glow" at all.  Now I know why.

Off to find someone who is willing to have me experiment focusing closely on their acne or facial hair...

Michael L NYC 99 wrote:

joeletx wrote:

Another example where peaking does not work is taking picture of a painting; nothing will glow accept the hard edges on the picture frame.

That's not always the case. With the E-M10, if the camera detects contrast, it will show the seam of flat objects where the contrast changes. I experimented with focus peaking by pointing at my TV screen and it worked with objects displayed on the screen. As I recall, there were graphics with boxes on the screen and the peaking highlighted the edges of the boxes and graphics.

Regards

Michael

Michael, some peaking is better than others but it is always discussed as if they were all the same.

There seems to be no rating scale for good or bad focus peaking or direct comparison between types and it can even vary between cameras of the same brand.

Lenses affect it - high contrasty ones or wide work better and low contrast or telephoto less well.

The subject matter can also cause a variable effect as has been already mentioned as the focus peaking needs contrasty objects to work.  The only type that I know that works on most things except a blank white painted plaster wall is Ricoh's Mode2 which is different from all the rest and which I have been told is not focus peaking at all but a method of enhancing all edges in the frame depending on their level of contrast rather than picking out only focused points of contrast with edge flares.  Thereby all edges show their relative contrast level and the whole screen is working on the job not just some often hard to find twinkling flares.  Hard to describe but it is remarkably different from every other system I have seen.

The upshot is that the magnification versus focus peaking argument will wander on as long as the peaking system used varies and the users who comment only on the system that they use.  I suffer from only having tried five different focus peaking systems over five different camera bodies and I could hardly say that I have exhaustively tried them all sufficient that I could give a respectable judgement.

It can be argued that the focus system that each post-maker personally knows is better/worse than magnified focus in their own experience even though this might not apply to all systems of focus peaking.

The argument must thereby only come to a limited set of conclusions and few can be convinced that they are anything more than opinions based on limited experience (as are mine).